TRENTON — The trial of Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo will at least partially rest on how much the jury believes the testimony of the government’s key cooperating witness: Marliese Ljuba.

Ljuba, the former employee of Vineland-based insurance broker Allen Associates and former insurance broker for Hamilton Township School District and several other municipalities and school districts, testified that over the course of several months she gave $12,400 in bribes to Bencivengo in exchange for his influence with the local school board.

“I had a very lucrative contract with the school district and I did not want to lose that contract,” she said.

At its core, the case involves Bencivengo, Ljuba and the admitted middleman, former Hamilton Board of Education member and township administrator Rob Warney, who testifies today. Both sides presented their opening arguments Tuesday and began questioning Ljuba.

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Jerome Ballarotto, Bencivengo’s attorney, said Bencivengo regarded the money from her as a loan from a friend and not a bribe.

He said the prosecution tried to downplay both the unreliability of Ljuba’s evidence and the relationship she had with Bencivengo.

“The description that they were friends doesn’t begin to describe the relationship they had,” he said.

He portrayed Ljuba during an at-times combative cross examination as a puppet master who maneuvered the FBI, prosecutors and Bencivengo in order to get off without prosecution.

“She took that target off her back and put it on John’s,” he said in his opening argument. “She got what we call a pass, a gimme a do over, a mulligan, a walk…She got off without so much as a parking ticket.”

Dustin Chao, the assistant US attorney who presented the opening argument, said they knew each other but were not really friends. He said the mayor accepted the bribe in exchange for his influence with two members of the school board: Stephanie Pratico and Board President Patty Del Giudice.

“John Bencivengo, mayor of Hamilton, New Jersey, broke the law, broke the law not once, not twice but three times when he took bribe payments from the school districts’ insurance broker,” he said.

But much of Ljuba’s testimony Tuesday didn’t focus on the alleged bribes Bencivengo alone. It detailed a web of influence she developed over more than a decade in Mercer County politics. Over the course of her career with several insurance brokerage firms, she had half a dozen contracts with municipalities and school districts in New Jersey that she maintained through bribery, illegal contributions and influence peddling.

She also talked about her relationship with more than a dozen board members, municipal employees and elected officials in Hamilton and Robbinsville whom she bribed, helped find employment for or illegally contributed to their campaigns.

The alleged bribe to Bencivengo, the government argued, was the latest in a series of steps she had taken to safeguard her position and income in the township.

For the entirety of the testimony, Bencivengo, dressed in a suit, sat quietly listening to the testimony. He declined comment on his case.

The government testimony included videos, recordings, transcripts of text messages and EZ Pass records.

The alleged Bencivengo bribery

The most basic facts of the case are not disputed by either side; Ljuba gave $12,400 to Bencivengo through three separate payments in 2011. One payment, a $5,000 check made to Warney’s wife in June, was laundered by Warney. But the prosecution and defense dispute the motivation for the giving and many of the facts surrounding it.

Prosecutors Chao and Assistant US Attorney Harvey Bartle alleged they were in exchange for the mayor’s influence with the school board and in particular with a pair of school board members who would vote on Ljuba’s contract.

Ballarotto said Bencivengo intended to pay back the loan out of money from a lawsuit — for a shoulder injury that required surgery last year — and was depressed at the time. The mayor was going through a separation from his wife, living in an apartment and paying rent for his then-girlfriend, Lauren Auletta.

“This is the person that John (Bencivengo) went to and said; can you help me out?” he said.

The payments started last May, when Ljuba said she and Bencivengo planned to write a check so he could settle outstanding tax bills and expenses. To hide the payment, they brought in then-Director of Community Planning and Compliance Rob Warney.

Ljuba said she wanted in exchange Bencivengo’s influence with Board Member Stephanie Pratico, who said she wanted to publicly bid out the contract Ljuba’s firm currently had.

“He said yes he would absolutely help me,” she said.

After discussing it, Ljuba said they decided that they would write a $5,000 check to Warney’s wife from Ljuba’s husband. On the memo line, it was noted as for a “cherry bedroom set.” That conversation was not recorded for the FBI, but Ljuba said a later conversation with Warney was.

In that conversation, he said he gave the money to Bencivengo in small increments, between $500 and $1,000 at a time.

“A little here, a little here, but I’m down to 500 so It’s good,” he said.

Ljuba said she cooperated with the FBI after talking to an agent named William Monks on June 16, 2011. He interviewed her about the criminal charges against her former boss, but said she decided to offer up information about her bribes, including the $5,000 check to Warney’s wife.

“I was scared to death … It’s not every day you get called in by the FBI,” she said.

Ballarotto said she worked with the FBI in order to save her own skin from federal prosecution. In June 2012, a year after she began cooperating with the FBI, she signed a deal with the Department of Justice granting her immunity from federal prosecution in exchange for her testimony.

“How much more highly motivated could this woman be?” he said. “This paid off big time for her.”

After that, she began recording conversations between her, Bencivengo and Warney. On several occasions, they also included video.

Before a trip to Atlantic City in July, Bencivengo was videotaped receiving a $2,400 payment from Ljuba in his apartment and counting it.

In Atlantic City, she videotaped him receiving and counting out a $5,000 payment. The two discussed in one recording that they could make it look like he won while in one of the city’s casinos.

Before those payments and afterward, they were recorded discussing the mayor’s financial situation, which included more than $5,000 owed to the IRS, township politics and the school board.

Ballarotto also spent time establishing the relationship between Ljuba and Bencivengo. During cross examination, she said she would regularly kiss Bencivengo and say “I love you” on seeing him.

“We’re friends for life,” Bencivengo said in one recording.

“I think we’ve already established that,” she said in response.

Brown paper bagmen

Part of Ljuba’s network — or “the organization” as it was referred to in the testimony — included her giving large sums of money to political campaigns through intermediaries.

As the insurance broker for Hamilton Township School District, Robbinsville Township, Robbinsville Township School District, Clayton School Distrcit, Plainsboro Township and others, she said she earned more than half a million dollars a year.

For at least eight years, Ljuba said she had been using funds to influence the politics in Hamilton, but she had been the broker for Hamilton School District since 1996.

She said she gave “straw contributions” to various council and school board campaigns through Rob Warney, Joy Tozzi, former school board member and current business administrator in Robbinsville Township, Tozzi’s brother-in-law Chris Tozzi and others.

She claimed straw contributions, totaling $11,000 to the council campaigns through Joy Tozzi in 2004 and 2005, were payments in return for helping her get people jobs in the township and get introductions for her to others. She said she gave the $11,000 to the council campaign of Tom Goodwin, Dennis Pone and Dave Kenny for town council.

“I wanted to support the Republican slate to further myself into politics and gain power in Republican Party,” she said.

Ljuba said she bribed Tozzi with $10,000 between 2005 and 2007 in exchange for her vote for the Allen Associates contract on the board. She also took the Tozzi family on a trip to Disneyland, helped her get a van, gave her a dining set worth $2,000 and $2,000 in clothing for her new job in Robbinsville.

In addition, she said she bribed two other Board members with $10,000 each when her contract came up for a vote in 2006: Warney and then-Board Member Anthony Coluccio.

She said she gave more than $6,000 to the 2011 campaign of Board President Patty Del Giudice and a total of between $12,000 and $14,000 to the slate, which included Board Members Stephanie Pratico and Joe Malagrino.

Those payments apparently did not keep Pratico and Del Giudice in line, as Ljuba wanted them off the Board or at least, out of her way. Pratico wanted to put the Allen Associates contract out to bid and Del Giudice “didn’t do as she was told,” Ljuba said in one recording.

Ljuba said they tried to convince Del Giudice to run for State Assembly instead of Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried, but she decided against it.

In the recording, Bencivengo said he told Pratico “you have to support those who support you,” and started trying to convince her to run for state assembly instead of Fried. Neither ran for the office.

— If you want to read more about the Bencivengo trial — including the money left in suit pants and shenanigans with screwy Russian construction workers, check out hamiltoninfocus.blogspot.com.